“Do you want a physical description?”

“No.”

“The odds that you’ll have to lay her?”

“No.”

“Do you want her sexual background?”

Danny threw his question out before he could back down. “No. I want to know why a ranking policeman has a crush on a Commie socialite.”

Considine blushed pink—the way Felix Gordean told him he blushed; Danny tried reading his face and caught: got me. Call-me-Mal laughed, slid off his wedding band and tossed it in the wastebasket. He said, “Man to man?”

Danny said, “No, brass to brass.”

Considine made the sign of the cross on his vestfront. “Ashes to ashes, and not bad for a minister’s son. Let’s just say I’m susceptible to dangerous women, and my wife is divorcing me, so I can’t chase around and give her ammo to use in court. I want custody of my son, and I will not give her one shred of evidence to spoil my case. And I don’t usually offer my confessions to junior officers.”

Danny thought: this man is so far out on a limb that you can say anything to him and he’ll stick around—because at 1:00 A.M. he’s got no place fucking else to go. “And that’s why you’re getting such a kick out of operating De Haven?”

Considine smiled and tapped the top desk drawer. “Why am I betting there’s a bottle, in here?”

Danny felt himself blush. “Because you’re smart?”

The hand kept tapping. “No, because your nerves are right up there with mine, and because you always stink of Lavoris. Brass to rookie, here’s a lesson: cops who smell of mouthwash are juicers. And juicer cops who can keep it on a tight leash are usually pretty good cops.”

“Pretty good cops” flashed a green light. Danny nudged Considine’s hand away, opened the drawer and pulled out a pint and two paper cups. He poured quadruple shots and offered; Considine accepted with a bow; they hoisted drinks. Danny said, “To both our cases”; Considine toasted, “To Stefan Heisteke Considine.” Danny drank, warmed head to toe, drank; Considine sipped and hooked a thumb over his back at Harlan “Buddy” Jastrow. “Upshaw, who is this guy? And why are you so bent out of shape on your goddamn homo killings?”

Danny locked eyes with Jastrow. “Buddy’s the guy I used to want to get, the guy who used to be the worst, the hardest nut to crack because he was just plain nowhere. Now there’s this other thing, and it’s just plain terror. It’s incredibly brutal, and I think it might be random, but I don’t quite go with that. I think I’m dealing with revenge. I think all the killer’s methods are reenactments, all the mutilations are symbolic of him trying to get his past straight in his mind. I keep thinking it all out, and I keep coming back to revenge on old wrongs. Not everyday childhood trauma shit, but big, big stuff.”

Danny paused, drank and sighted in on the mugboard around Jastrow’s neck: Kern County Jail, 3/4/38. “Sometimes I think that if I know who this guy is and why he does it, then I’ll know something so big that I’ll be able to figure out all the everyday stuff like cake. I can get on with making rank and handling meat and potatoes stuff, because everything I ever sensed about what people are capable of came together on one job, and I nailed why. Why. Fucking why.”

Considine’s, “And why you do what you do yourself,” was very soft. Danny looked away from Jastrow and killed his drink. “Yeah, and that. And why you’re so hopped on Claire De Haven and me. And don’t say out of patriotism.”

Considine laughed. “Kid, would you buy patriotism if I told you the grand jury guarantees me a captaincy, Chief DA’s Investigator and the prestige to keep my son?”

“Yeah, but there’s still De Haven and—”

“Yeah, and me. Let’s just put it this way. I have to know why, too, only I like going at it once removed. Satisfied?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you would be.”

“Do you know why?”

Considine sipped bourbon. “It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

“I used to steal cars, Lieut—Mal. I was the ace car thief of San Berdoo County right before the war. Turnabout?”

Lieutenant Mal Considine stuck out a long leg and hooked the wastebasket over to his chair. He rummaged in it, found his wedding band and slipped it on. “I’ve got a confab with my lawyer for the custody case tomorrow, and I’m sure he’ll want me to keep wearing this fucking thing.”

Danny leaned forward. “Turnabout, Captain?”

Considine stood up and stretched. “My brother used to blackmail me, threaten to rat me to the old man every time I said something snotty about religion. Since ten strokes with a switch was the old man’s punishment for blasphemy, old Desmond pretty much got his way, which was usually me breaking into houses to steal stuff he wanted. So let’s put it this way: I saw a lot of things that were pretty swell, and some things that were pretty spooky, and I liked it. So it was either become a burglar or a spy, and policeman seemed like a good compromise. And sending in the spies appealed to me more than doing it myself, sort of like Desmond in the catbird seat.”

Danny stood up. “I’m going to nail De Haven for you. Trust me on that.”

“I don’t doubt it, Ted.”

“In vino veritas, right?”

“Sure, and one more thing. I’ll be Chief of Police or something else that large before too long, and I’m taking you with me.”

Mal woke up thinking of Danny Upshaw.

Rolling out of bed, he looked at the four walls of Room 11, the Shangri-Lodge Motel. One framed magazine cover per wall— Norman Rockwell testimonials to happy family life. A stack of his soiled suits by the door—and no Stefan to run them to the dry cleaners. The memo corkboard he’d erected, one query tag standing out: locate Doc Lesnick. The fink/shrink could not be reached either at home or at his office and the 1942—1944 gaps in Reynolds Loftis’ file had to be explained; he needed a general psych overview of the brain trusters now that their decoy was about to be in place, and all the files ended in the late summer of last year—why?

And the curtains were cheesecloth gauze; the rug was as threadbare as a tortilla; the bathroom door was scrawled over with names and phone numbers—”Sinful Cindy, DU-4927, 38-2438, loves to fuck and suck”—worth a jingle—if he ever ran Vice raids again. And Dudley Smith was due in twenty minutes—good guy/bad guy as today’s ticket: two Pinko screenwriters who avoided HUAC subpoenas because they always wrote under pseudonyms and blew the country when the shit hit the fan in ‘47. They had been located by Ed Satterlee operatives—private eyes on the Red Crosscurrents payroll—and both men knew the UAES bigshots intimately back in the late ‘30s, early ‘40s.

And getting so chummy with an underling was strange. A couple of shared drinks and they were spilling their guts to each other—bad chain of command policy—ambitious policemen should keep it zipped while they climbed the ladder.

Mal showered, shaved and dressed, running book—De Haven versus Upshaw, even money as his best bet. At 8:30 exactly a car horn honked; he walked outside and saw Dudley leaning against his Ford. “Good morning, Malcolm! Isn’t it a grand day!”

They drove west on Wilshire, Mal silent, Dudley talking politics. “…I’ve been juxtaposing the Communist way of life against ours, and I keep coming back to family as the backbone of American life. Do you believe that, Malcolm?”

Mal knew that Loew had filled him in on Celeste—and that as far as partners went, he could have worse—like Buzz Meeks. “It has its place.”

“I’d be a bit more emphatic on that, given the trouble you’re taking to get your son back. Is it going well with your lawyer?”

Mal thought of his afternoon appointment with Jake Kellerman. “He’s going to try to get me continuances until the grand jury is in session and making hay. I have the preliminary in a couple of days, and we’ll start putting the stall in then.”